Horrible local band - Gortuary

This band frustrates me. They're among a handful of local bands who are gaining (relatively) widespread recognition, and yet they've failed to make death metal at all. Apparently they've only been exposed to Cannibal Corpse and the like, especially judging by lyrical themes and (lack of) musicality.

The riffs go off onto random tangents, and don't really tie into one another. It's a mishmash of disconnected ideas, like they're frantically trying to include every riff they come up with into one song with no serious thought put into bridging those riffs. I'd basically say that it's actually just fuzzy noise and thumping, and not so much music.

I can't say much about the lyrics other than looking at the song titles. They're totally Cannibal Corpse-like and clichéd almost beyond rational sense. Like they're part of the never-ending contest to see who can come up with the most grotesque lyrics by generally recombining stuff that's already been written.

Raise_the_Dead

The problem with metal at this point in its history is that is trapped within style (genre). "This is death metal, this is black metal, this is heavy, this is brutal." These become keywords that people attach to the various types of metal, as if metal as a whole was a filing cabinet with neat little labels on each drawer. Part of what made death metal scary (to me) was how it addressed death (and life) as absurd, unreal, morally ambiguous... bands like this prove that there is no more ambiguity, everything is neatly compartmentalized (this drawer is tagged "goregrind," "sickkk," "brutal," etc.) and so metal is no longer truly frightening, no matter how bloody or perverse this band's lyrics or artwork may be.

The problem with metal at this point in its history is that is trapped within style (genre). "This is death metal, this is black metal, this is heavy, this is brutal." These become keywords that people attach to the various types of metal, as if metal as a whole was a filing cabinet with neat little labels on each drawer. Part of what made death metal scary (to me) was how it addressed death (and life) as absurd, unreal, morally ambiguous... bands like this prove that there is no more ambiguity, everything is neatly compartmentalized (this drawer is tagged "goregrind," "sickkk," "brutal," etc.) and so metal is no longer truly frightening, no matter how bloody or perverse this band's lyrics or artwork may be.

Ignore them, they won't last long.

That was probably the most well-worded way of describing how I feel about the current state of metal. Thank you for articulating my frustrations,

The problem with metal at this point in its history is that is trapped within style (genre). "This is death metal, this is black metal, this is heavy, this is brutal." These become keywords that people attach to the various types of metal, as if metal as a whole was a filing cabinet with neat little labels on each drawer.

Do not agree.

Quote

Part of what made death metal scary (to me) was how it addressed death (and life) as absurd, unreal, morally ambiguous... bands like this prove that there is no more ambiguity, everything is neatly compartmentalized (this drawer is tagged "goregrind," "sickkk," "brutal," etc.) and so metal is no longer truly frightening, no matter how bloody or perverse this band's lyrics or artwork may be.

Trauco

How? All around I hear how this and that band is or isn't 'brutal', 'sick', 'true' or 'old school' enough. The overwhelming majority of metalheads occupy these and other labels because of their obsession with having new music fill their own individual pre-conceptions, even if their methods are extremely simple minded and never go beyond aesthetics.

If license were given to create threads dedicated solely to horrible local bands, the forum would almost instantaneously be inundated with such material.

Quote

\ "Old school death metal" can be descriptive or a marketing term -- like any word or phrase.

It is increasingly the latter as opposed to the former. There are better descriptive terms than simply 'old school' to determine style and quality among intelligent metalheads when referring to such bands.